


Electric Sheep

by kasiapeia



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: 5'2" Japanese Corpo bitch with a sword is basically her entire personality, And Johnny's what? A 6'1" anti-capitalism terrorist with a gun?, Bad Decisions, Cliffhanger, Drinking, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Mutual Pining, Not Beta Read, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing, he's not a good person but honestly neither is my V (though in a different way entirely), may continue if there's interest, yes I just got Cyberpunk and yes I'm kind of trash for this dynamic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:54:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28044258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasiapeia/pseuds/kasiapeia
Summary: V can feel herself slipping away. Johnny isn't helping. She thinks that he wants her to disappear already, just so he can have his own life again, but there's a lot of things Johnny doesn't tell her.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand & Female V, Johnny Silverhand/Female V
Comments: 19
Kudos: 303





	Electric Sheep

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so, I've got a couple few 10hrs in the game and though I do have my gripes with it, I'm a sucker for Keanu Reeves, what can I say? If there's interest in this, I might continue this further, so if you'd like to see more, leave a comment!

V presses a hand to her head as pain pulses behind her eyes. It’s become a familiar friend as of late, getting worse and worse as the days pass. Misty had warned her that she might want to give up one day, pass on her own terms without a fight, but giving up was never something V was particularly good at. If he wants to take over her body, he’ll have to fight her for every bit of control.

But fuck her, sometimes she does think about saying _fuck it_ and letting him have whatever he wants.

He’d fucking like that, she bets. He’d fucking like it if corpo scum like her would just end it. Well fuck him, she thinks. This body is hers for as long as she can have it, and if he wants to spit on her grave after she’s dead, then let him.

Blindly, she gropes over the edge of the bed for the half-empty bottle of tequila she’d left there the night before, turning to booze to drown out Johnny fucking Silverhand’s bullshit. It’s barely enough lately, even when combined with the blockers. He’s a near constant companion as of late, hovering in the edge of her vision at all times, muttering under his breath. It used to be enough—the drugs, the booze, the blockers. It used to get him to shut up.

She’s running out of time.

Grimacing against the morning light, she takes a swig directly from the bottle. It doesn’t hurt going down anymore. Her vision rips and tears, like a screen struggling to process an image, devolving into static before snapping back into place.

“Good morning.”

V grits her teeth, biting back the pain as she glares at Johnny. He’s fucking sprawled out on her couch, wearing his stupid ass sunglasses even as he pages absentmindedly through an old magazine. “Oh? We being nice today?”

“Watch it,” he bites back as she bends over his shoulder, ripping the magazine from his hands. She catches him pause as his eyes catch the bottle in her hands. “Early, isn’t it?”

“Fuck off.”

“Used to make me go away.” Johnny examines his titular hand, watching the way it catches the light streaming in through the windows. “I’m still here, Samurai.”

“Wish you weren’t,” she says under her breath, but of course, it doesn’t escape his notice. Nothing escapes his fucking notice when he’s in her head. He’s a condescending prick, shit-talking everything that he can. The state of her apartment, her old job, her taste in clothes—anything that he can complain about, he fucking complains about.

She thinks about ripping the chip out sometimes, killing them both, when he’s being an asshole. And honestly, him not being an asshole is a fucking rare occasion.

“It’s getting worse.” She isn’t used to Johnny being all serious. It’s always all levity and wit and complaining and jokes and—

Fuck. If he’s getting serious about this, shit’s really getting bad. How long does she have left?

“I don’t know.” She hates it when he does that, hates it when he answers her thoughts. “I do know _that_ , though.”

“Stop it,” V snaps, taking another shot. She half wants to throw the empty bottle against the wall. Instead, she inhales slowly through her nose, trying to clear her mind as she slicks her hair back in a tight ponytail, setting the bottle down on a nearby table. She ignores his watchful gaze as she shuffles through her clothing.

“You still dress like a corp,” he mutters. “Can’t fucking let that part of you go, can you?”

She clenches her hands into fists by her side. “That was a long time ago.”

“Well,” he’s got that stupid smug smile on his face again, “you know what they say. You can kick the bitch out of the corp but you can’t kick the corp out of the bitch.”

She doesn’t even have the energy to argue with him about this anymore. It’s a constant push and pull with him on this matter. He doesn’t care that she came from nothing, doesn’t care that she grew up on the streets just like him, managing to work her way up Arasaka’s ranks. All he cares about is the fact that she used to work for the people who killed him.

Not like Arasaka hadn’t kicked her to the curb as soon as she’d served her purpose.

“Shit,” he says, quiet and soft now. “It’s really getting bad.”

She sighs heavily, meeting his eyes. “Yeah.” There isn’t anything else she can say. She’s scared? Johnny probably doesn’t give a fuck about that, anyway, knowing him.

“I do.”

“Stop doing that,” she says.

He gets off the sofa, approaching her slowly. He isn’t real, and yet, she can still feel the cold metal of his hand as he places a finger beneath her chin, forcing her to turn her head from side to side. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

She doesn’t need a literal ghost in the machine to tell her that much. Fuck, she doesn’t even need a mirror for that either. She can tell just by the way her augmented bones ache, can tell by how if she doesn’t concentrate, the world starts to slip away in pixels and flashes of neon lights. She’s dying, slowly. Misty had warned her that one day she’d wake up and no longer be herself. She hadn’t expected it to be so fucking terrifying.

“It’s okay to be scared of dying, y’know.” Johnny isn’t one for tact or kindness, and she half wonders what the fuck has happened to him to make him this hesitant, this timid. “S’natural.”

“Is that sympathy, I hear?” She always turns to derision when he’s like this, hoping her anger will incite his because anger seems to be the only thing she understands nowadays. Anger and violence—those things she can make sense of. Sympathy, kindness—that shit’s harder. “What happened to hating this ‘corp bitch’?”

Something that almost looks like remorse passes over him. Remorse isn’t like him either. He commits to his fuck ups, bitterly trying to defend his decisions like she gives a shit about his reasoning. It’d be easier if they were friends, easier if she could look past his jackassery and he could look past her defensiveness. But shit’s never fucking easy in Night City.

Johnny looks away for a moment, removing his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Fuck, Samurai, you think I’m not scared shitless here too? You might be corp scum, but if you die, if that chip in your head dies, I’m dead too, remember?” He pauses, and then, quieter: “I don’t hate you. For the record.”

“You sure seem to act like you do.”

“The hell else am I meant to act like?” he shouts back at her. “Fucking tripping over my heels, beggin’ you to end it early so I have more time? What kind of fucking person do you think I am? Do you seriously fuckin’ think that I _enjoy_ this any more than you do? Bein’ told that, no matter what I do, a part of you is gon’ end up dying, and I’m going to take your spot? You think I _want_ to look in the mirror a year from now and see _your_ face looking back at me? I never had a fucking say in this shit either!”

He runs a hand through his hair, swearing under his breath as he paces the length of her apartment.

“Should never have tried to stand up to the old man,” he says quietly, voice cracking. “Wish I’d learnt that sooner.”

V sighs, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Johnny—”

“I don’t need your fucking pity,” he says, sharp and biting as he meets her eyes, stilling when she stands there, silent, her lips pressed together. He wets his lower lip with his tongue, swallowing. “I’m…”

“You don’t need to apologise,” she says, “and I wasn’t offering my pity. Sympathy, maybe, but I’m also the only person who knows what you’re going through.” She watches his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, unused to her rare displays of softness.

She’s not good at this sort of shit. Cutthroat corpo bitch with a sword? Yeah, that she can do. Normal human being, connecting with another? No way.

She’d been called cold hearted by her exes in the past when they’d ended up far more invested in her than she in them. But when she looks up at Johnny, it’s like none of that matters. Not as much as it used to, anyway. They fight and they bicker constantly, but something in the past few weeks had changed things. Maybe the realisation that her death may very well be inevitable?

He’s almost uncomfortably close; she can feel his breath on the top of her head when she looks up at him, can feel his chest move every time he inhales, almost brushing against her own. His stupid fucking silver hand slips down from his hair, tracing the outline of augs across her brow bone, then drift down to tuck a stray lock of hair back behind her ear.

“I’m sorry,” he says in a voice barely above a whisper, disappearing in a flicker of neon blue light.

She exhales sharply as he disappears, retreating to the furthest reaches of her mind, his presence almost nonexistent now. If he can still hear her thoughts, she doesn’t know, but—

But what?

But there had been a moment there when she’d truly thought he might—

Don’t fucking even _think_ it, V. Don’t. That’s a long and dark path that you don’t want to go down. There’s nothing down that path besides heartache and misery. Still, a part of her asks: what if?


End file.
